Blog posts

Long time reader, first time poster.

I've made bread on and off for over forty years, from necessity in college, to fiscal sanity nowadays. My wife and I work from home, and when I bake during the day, she claims the aroma creates a "hostile work environment".

I read here on a post one day that a pain du campaign must be at least 10% rye flour. This is a mini boule really with just 300 grams total flour at 74% hydration, 10% each rye and whole wheat flours and strong bread flour for the rest. I used 50 g liquid levain and 7 grams salt. I shaped as a boule taking care to get a very tight skin and baked Forkish style, proofing seam side down and baking seam side up. Wonderful oven spring on this loaf. I am tempted to call it oven spring! The final loaf is about 51/2" in diameter and has bloomed to 5" in height!

SFBI style pain au levain at 80% hydration.

Not my style, and too lazy, I guess.  Earlier this week SteveB posted his magnificent 80% hydration pain au levain, which disappeared all too quickly from the current Bread Browser images.  I'd been making a few different versions, including my take on David Snyder's take on an SFBI pain au levain.

My first Hamelman rye bake.  Someone please explain why I waited so long to start baking Hamelman rye recipes.  This took much less time than a normal bread, with 90-minutes each of bulk and final rise, then into the oven.  I love the mild sweet sourness of the rye, complimented by my non-controversial addition of caraway seeds after shaping.  Next time I will autolyse the WW and bread flour since it didn't occur to me at the time.

Amaranth/sesame on left, bulgur on right. 

This week I decided to go back to my roots in bread baking by baking the Overnight Country Brown recipe out of FWSY.  Of course, I had to put in a few add ins. Two of the loaves got a total of 100 g of bulgur soaked in 100 g of water and the other two got 100 g of sprouted amaranth (24 hours) and 25 g of black sesame seeds. I added the add ins at the autolyse stage but otherwise followed the recipe as written in the book. 

Dear friends:

Just wanted to let you know that despite my life has been upside down lately, I'm still hanging in there and trying to bake when I can...

So you know I have not given up baking yet...

My latest bake was inspired by Ru007's double fermented oat porridge sourdough, omitting the seeds and nuts to keep it simple. I first tried this a fortnight ago and produced a pancake. I suspect this was due to over-fermentation. Ru007 already recommended reducing the final rise time, and I suspect my fridge doesn't get very cold.

Hi everybody,

I’ve just come out a very busy three weeks at work, no time to bake L It gave me a chance to make my way through all the loaves in the freezer. So now its time to stock up again!

This week’s loaf is a variation of one of my favourite loaves polenta pepita sourdough. I decided to substitute the pumpkin seeds with pecans.

Formula:

Hi all, 

My 3th bread. 

Followed most of the tips suggested by you all and they were useful. 

Bread was soft and the crust was crunchy.  Went perfectly with pulled pork and Cole slaw. 

Will bake this one more often now. 

I am now getting the hang of it; the process and its important elements. 

Next recipe with Polish.  Wish me luck. 

Thank you.